The Age of the Earth has been a matter of interest to humans for millennia. All verifiable evidence indicates that the Earth is about 6,000 years old. Yet with circular reasoning and implausible assumptions, liberals insist that the Earth is approximately 4.54 billion years (4.54 × 109 ± 1%).[1][2][3]

Old Earth advocates rely on one flawed assumption to the exclusion of other evidence, similar to how an investigator may mistakenly rely on one faulty eyewitness's opinion to the exclusion of all else. In fact, eyewitness testimony is proven to be less reliable than other indicators, just as the assumption by Old Earth proponents that the rate of radioactive decay has always been constant is flawed. Far from being constant, the rate of radioactive decay would almost certainly slow down as the universe cools.[4][5][6] At the very least, it is not consistent and easily predictable.[7]

Moreover, a large number of physical processes, such as neutron capture and fluctuations in solar radiation, affect the rate of radioactive decay of elements in the Earth's crust and render radioactive dating measurements unreliable, depending upon the specific methods used.[8]

Historical views

Widespread Historical Acceptance of Biblical Account

For most of recorded history humans of many backgrounds, such as St. Barnabas and St. Irenæus,[9] viewed the age of the Earth to be around 6,000 years.[10]

Saint Cyril, who came into Great Moravia (present day Slovakia and Moravia in Czech Republic) from Byzantine Empire in 863 AD as Christian missionary, wrote in his poem Proglas,[11] dedicated to his works on translation of the four biblicalGospels to Slavonic language, the following sentence that brings testimony about the perception of the age of the world that time:

“

To the holy Gospels I am the Foreword: for as it was promised by the prophets long ago, Christ comes to gather the nations, for He sheds light on the world entire.That is what has happened in our seventh millennium.

For example, in his 1619 book the Harmonices Mundi (The Harmony of the World), Johannes Kepler, mathematician and astronomer, wrote that he does not care if his book will need to wait a century for a reader, as God has waited six thousand years for him as an observer.[14] Kepler calculated a Creation date of 3992 BC, and Isaac Newton also strongly defended Biblical chronology.[15][16][17] The latter also vigorously opposed to a naturalistic cosmic evolution and suggested chemical processes that might aid in explaining the creation of the earth's crust during the six days.[18]

In 1771, the first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, the oldest English-language general encyclopedia that was first published as a 3-volume set in Scotland, included a table of world events under the heading ‘Astronomy’ on page 493. These events begin with the creation of the world in the year 0, which they dated at 4007 years before Christ.[13][19]

In 1830, Dr. Hales published a list of 120 historical authorities from various cultures who had decided on an official date of creation.[20] These ranged from 6984 B.C. to 3616 B.C.[21]

Included in Hales' list is James Ussher, who calculated the famous date of 4004 B.C. for creation[22] and published it in his magnum opus, The Annals of the World during the mid-1600s. Young Earth creationists, essentially adopting the same method as Nikola Tesla who was taught by his mother "to seek all truth in the Bible,"[23] still consider this date to be close to the actual date.[24] The year 4004 B.C. was considered to be also a remarkable astronomical epoch by the great French astronomer Laplace who in his Méchanique Céleste, Tom III.p. 113, announced a curious discovery - it was supposed to be a year when the great axis of the earth's orbit coincided with the line of the equinoxes, and consequently true and mean equinoxes were united.[25]

Evolutionists vs. “odius spectre” Kelvin

“Time is in fact the hero of the plot … given so much time the "impossible" becomes possible, the possible probable and the probably virtually certainly certain. One has only to wait: time itself performs miracles.”

George-Louis Lecrerc, Count of Buffon, rejected Christianity, adopted evolutionary thought, and thus searched for materialistic explanations for the origin of earth.[31] Despite his treatises lacking both a timescale and even a clearly developed sense of time, in 1778 he proposed, apparently following his own belief "past is so old and has left so few traces that one can say anything one likes about it",[18] that the Earth was about 74,832 years old,[32] what was also in line with thinking that pushed God as Creator either back in time or out of the picture altogether.[31]
In the early nineteenth-century, the so called uniformitarians conspired to overthrow the Biblical chronology that would measure geologic time in generations of man.[33] The dictum as a fundamental maxim for their geological speculation and worldview[34] was expressed through James Hutton’s aphorism,[32] coming from his 1785 book Theory of the earth: “The revolt, therefore, of this physical inquiry is, that we find no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end.“[35][36] Hutton's theory of the earth was not based on field observations but on his wishful, speculative confusion of geological process with Newtonianphysics.[37]

In 1822, Fourier laid the groundwork for the mathematical analysis of the flow of heat in his treatise Théorie Analytique de la Chaleur; and later, in 1827, he published arguments that the Earth must be cooling.[38] This was in line with so called Kant-Laplace nebular hypothesis, under which the earth would have gradually cooled from its assumed molten beginnings to its current state.

In 1830 Charles Lyell, despite being familiar with Fourier's arguments,[38] supported, with a convert's zeal, the Hutton's idea of a
steady-state Earth of indefinite age in Principles of Geology,[32] a book that later influenced Darwin. Lyell started his book with a self-serving history of geology that uncritically hailed any insight anticipating uniformitarianism and under the banner “to free the science from Moses”[39]utterly dismissed the contributions of catastrophists including Georges Cuvier, the "lion of nineteenth-century French science" and founder of modern comparative anatomy and paleontology, who as early as 1796 announced "the existence of a world previous to ours, destroyed by some kind of catastrophe" and whose scientific arguments for the theory of special creation held back the tide of evolutionary thought for a generation.[31] Lyell shown up to be a disciple of Buffon, who resolutely refused to accept the notion of catastrophes, including the Biblical Flood, which many of their contemporaries upheld. Before Darwin boarded the HMS Beagle in 1831, his Cambridge tutor Adam Sedgwick, who had supplied just twenty-two years old Darwin with a reading list for the voyage, conspicuously omitted controversial Lyell’s Principles. Darwin was however given a copy of the book by the ship's aristocratic captain Robert FitzRoy, who wished to have some scientific person on board.[31][40] Darwin was fascinated by book, he dedicated his own writings about the voyage to Lyell, and in his letters claimed that "I always feel as if my books came half out of Lyell's brains ... the great merit of the Principles, was that it altered the whole tone of one's mind & therefore that when seeing a thing never seen by Lyell, one yet saw it partially through his eyes."[41]

About people who admit how incomprehensibly vast have been the past periods of time

In his 1859 Origin of species by means of Natural selection, Darwin declared that ‘He who can read Sir Charles Lyell’s grand work on the Principles of Geology, which the future historian will recognise as having produced a revolution in natural science, yet does not admit how incomprehensibly vast have been the past periods of time, may at once close this volume.’[35][46][note 4] Darwin based his views on Hutton and Lyell who were dedicated not to modern notions of geological dynamism but to antique ones of geological steady-state.[37] It is believed a feeling of guilt at having helped Darwin arrive at his heretical theories was a factor that might have contributed to FitzRoy’s tragic decision to suicide on 30 April 1865.[47][48]

The doctrine that the Earth was of unlimited age allowed Uniformitarian geologists to evade explaining any phenomena by laws of physics and resort to blurring them by “reckless drafts on the bank of time” instead. For the legendary British physicist William Thomson, later known as Lord Kelvin, this game without rules was simply not scientific. The speculations of uniformitarians on age of the Earth were forbidden by the laws of the thermodynamics, which he had helped in developing. He showed, with the full force and prestige of mathematical physics,[note 5] that, if one were to assume that the Earth is a solid body cooling from an initially high temperature, measurement of the rate of heat loss from its surface would clearly place limits on its age.

Kelvin started to advance his arguments under the title “Note on Certain Points in the Theory of Heat” first in 1844 in Cambridge Mathematical Journal. After clarifying some of Fourier’s mathematics related to the conduction of heat and the dissipation of energy, he presented the upper boundary for the age of the Earth in his 1863 classic paper On the Secular Cooling of the Earth as 98 millions of years.[50] The figure was based i.a. on following assumptions and considerations:

On the Kelvin's calculations

I have sometimes been asked by friends interested in geology to criticise Lord Kelvin's calculation of the probable age of the earth. I have usually said that it is hopeless to expect that Lord Kelvin should have made an error in calculation.

The ‘celebrated’ Poisson’s hypothesis, that the present underground heat of Earth is due to a passage, at some former period, of the Solar system through hotter stellar regions, would not serve uniformitarians and evolutionists right, since it either grants only short time periods with moderate temperature on earth’s surface or, if the transition from hot region to cold region is shifted further back in time, it leads to extreme temperatures that must have destroyed all animal and vegetable life.

The Leibnitz’s theory, which simply supposes the earth to have been at one time an incandescent liquid, without explaining how it got into that state, is the best for view of the geologists who require the longest periods.

The initial temperature of molten blob to be 7000 °F or 3888 °C, respectively, corresponding to a high estimate of generally assumed temperature of melting rock. Later Kelvin explained that he could take lower value as more probable, but was most anxious not to underestimate the age of the earth based on the very meager information then available.[52]

The measurements of underground temperatures near Edinburgh served as basis for the estimated “general increase of temperature in the Earth downwards” alias mean geothermal gradient of 1/50th of a degree Fahrenheit per foot (~ ca 36 °C/km).

After taking into account the estimated uncertainties in thermal gradient and thermal conductivity, Kelvin broadened an upper limit for the age of the Earth to interval between 20 and 400 millions of years (20 ~ 400 Ma). In a later paper, based on experimental results performed by Carl Barus (who found out that diabase, a typical basalt of very primitive character, melts between 1100 °C and 1170 °C and is thoroughly liquid at 1300 °C),[52] he modified the value for supposed initial molten rock temperature to 1200 °C,[33] thus by the end of the 1800s narrowed down the interval to 20 ~ 40Ma,[53] with personal preference for the lower value which is also the most quoted one.[27][54]

About theoretical views requiring a very long period

"When you measure what you are speaking about and express it in numbers, you know something about it, but when you cannot express it in numbers your knowledge about it is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind."

Many scientists liked these values, since they appeared to be consistent with calculations made by Hermann von Helmholtz, who in 1854 estimated the age of sun to be between 20 and 40 million years,[32][56] but for both evolutionists in biology as well as uniformitarians in geology they were distastefully low.[57] Darwin wrote in his letters that he has “not as yet been able to digest the fundamental notion of the shortened age of the sun and earth,”[58] and admitted that “Thompson's views of the recent age of the world” have been for some time one of his “sorest troubles.” (1869).[59] Notwithstanding some Croll's "excellent remarks on the work which can be effected within a million years," he felt "greatly troubled at the short duration of the world according to Sir W. Thompson," for Darwin required for his "theoretical views a very long period before the Cambrian formation".[44] After the publication of Kelvins’s views, Darwin first halved, in the second edition of the Origin of species (p. 287), his own estimate of the time ("far longer than 300 million years") allegedly elapsed since the latter part of the conjectured "Cretaceous period", and later withdrew the discussion altogether from the third edition.[45][60] In 1871 he even named Kelvin “an odious spectre” that came so that Darwin could not “rely much on pre-Silurian times.”[61]

Modernized pagan views

The game changer: Radioactivity mythmaking

The age of the earth is definite

"We do not say whether it is twenty million years or more, or less, but we say it is not indefinite. And we can say very definitely that it is not an inconceivably great number of millions of years.""We feel that there is no possibility of things going on for ever as they have done for the last six thousand years."

By the end of the nineteenth century, Lord Kelvin had completely demolished all opposition.[27] He made uniformitarian geological community to accept that the age of the earth must be finite and that estimating the age by quantitative reasoning instead of supporting steady-state theory with philosophical bias should be crucial part of the geological endeavor. Even ‘Darwin’s bulldog’ and musketeer of Darwinism Huxley, who previously attacked Kelvin by making indirect allusions about “the first passer-by who fancies that our house is not so well built as it might be”, ventured to suggest, in front of the Geological society of London, that “limitation of the period during which living beings have inhabited this planet to one, two, or three hundred million years, may be admitted, without a complete revolution in geological speculation.”[35] This was in direct contradiction with Darwin who previously declared that “a far longer period than 300 million years has elapsed” since the latter part of period for which he declared to have available “a clear evidence of the existence … of whole groups of beings."[note 6] Materialistic philosophers, such as the British analytical Bertrand Russell, realized that the Hutton's materialstic concept ”no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end” is further unmaintainable, and de facto denounced it while starting to proclaim Biblically compatible apocalyptic views: “all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of Solar System”. These things should be regarded, “if not quite beyond dispute,”“yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand.”[63]

But T.C. Chamberlin, head of the Department of Geology at the University of Chicago, was not prepared to concede defeat. While defending his faith in long-ages, he speculated, without any observational basis whatever, that there might yet be discovered new sources of energy that would allow more time than Kelvin had calculated.[64] Thus, the quest for the age of the earth as a subjective, arbitrary and erratic pursuit, was set for an fascinating turn.[27] This came in 1896, when radioactivity was discovered by Henri Becquerel and when in 1903 Pierre Curie and Albert Laborde demonstrated that radioactive decay releases heat. Before long, several people argued that this source of heat was great enough to overturn Kelvin’s conclusion about the boundary for the age of the earth. The situation resembled the one in the previous two centuries when “those who sought to extend biblical time hardly knew where to begin, how to proceed, and what to conclude.”[18] Among the followers of this effort was Ernest Rutherford, who in 1904 suggested, in the Royal Institution, that “Lord Kelvin had limited the Age of the Earth, ‘provided no new source of heat was discovered.’ That prophetic utterance refers to what we are considering tonight, radium!” Later, Rutherford often repeated his tale of thinking on his feet in front of the “old bird” Kelvin who “beamed” at him. This episode and pleasing form of the anecdote, boosted by the eminence of its author, who was considered the father of the nuclear theory, provided a ready vehicle for mythmaking and uncritical acceptance of proposition that because the discovery of radioactive heat undermined an assumption behind Kelvin’s calculation, it also undermined his conclusion.[38] As the half-life of radium's dominant isotope is 1600 yr, heat given out by radium obviously could not be the wanted missing energy.[note 7] Nevertheless, later assumptions of equilibrium in decay series of uranium and thorium allowed to consider heat sources with half-lives in gigayears (Ga; 1 Ga = 109 years).

The 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica discussed dates up to 500 million years.[66]
By about 1930, J. H. Jeans was arguing for an age of the Earth of around two billion years.[67]

The inclusion of radiogenic heat makes however only insignificant difference in terms of age limit inferred from the time required for the surface gradient to reach its present-day estimated value of 20 °C/km supported by observational evidence.
As a matter of fact, it is freely acknowledged that radioactive heat sources within the earth do not account for its present internal temperatures if the earth had really existed for 4.5 Ga. The statements such as "Thanks to Madame Curie, the inexhaustible energies of the atom of the globe … are potentially available to geological speculation" and "Kelvin overthrown"[57] are logically incorrect; Kelvin's conclusion would be undermined by that discovery only if incorporation of the Earth's radioactive heat into his calculations produced a substantially different age limits for the earth.

The general conclusion is that, even if Kelvin had included a reasonable radiogenic heat production in his thermal calculations, he would still have found grounds for arguing that the age limit of the earth was of the order of 108 years and his estimate would have been virtually unaffected.[33]

The Scientific Dogma of 4.5 billion years

Subjective biased approach to data selection

"In general, dates in the correct ballpark are assumed to be correct and are published, but those in disagreement with other date are seldom published, nor are the discrepancies fully explained."

In 1943 R.A. Daly of Harvard University published his authoritative paper “Meteorites and an Earth model,” where he studied the analogies between terrestrial rocks and meteorites, coupled with deductions on the probable nature of the Earth’s interior. He hypothesized that the latter ones originated by disruption of a planet once situated between Mars and Jupiter, in the region now occupied by asteroids. At first textbooks have quoted his theory approvingly, but later it has been disfavored due to mineralogical discontinuities between different groups of meteorites which were interpreted as evidence against a single parent body hypothesis. Nevertheless, the meteorites, “enigmatic bodies,” have managed to attract the great resurgence of interest in scientific research.[69]

In his 1956 paper named Age of Meteorites and the Earth, Claire Patterson, using “certain assumptions which are apparently justified,” introduced for meteor age a figure of 4.55 ± 0.07 × 109yr. and commented that since earth lead meets the requirement for definition of “the isotopic evolution of lead for any meteoritic body,” it is therefore “believed that the age for the earth is the same as for meteorites” and that "this is the time since the earth attained its present mass".[70] In spite of cautions and skepticism advised by the authors, this faith-based figure gradually became a scientific dogma that rarely anyone has dared to question.[71] Henry Morris explains that the unprovable assumptions are not the only problem with radiometric dating. One huge concern is that the results published are only a selected sample, chosen especially to agree with preconceived ideas about the earth, life, and evolution.[72]

When in 1972 N.H. Gale tried to corroborate this established figure, he discovered that U-Pb ages "showed apparent large excess of radiogenic lead compared with the amount expected from the decay of Uranium in the meteorites over 4.5AE. ... For each of the 4 meteorites there was an excess of radiogenic lead not supported by uranium decay over 4.5AE.” After short analysis:

“The superior modern analytical methods used made it impossible that analytical contamination could explain the result.

The circumstances ... make it extremely unlikely that terrestrial contamination could explain the results for this meteorites.

... a considerable excess of radiogenic lead in most fractions ...is difficult to attribute to contamination,“

rather than starting to reckon with possibility to challenge the established figures and methods, after recalling that “Patterson was the first to show that several stony meteorites yield a ... model of 4.5AE,” he proposed the new explanation for discovered discrepancy: "discordant results can be attributed to contamination."[note 8]

"Most advocates do not defend their theses out of conviction that they are true, but rather because they once declared them to be true."

— Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Consequently, his research of the Earth’s age turned into calculation of "the correct sample ratios" from "observed ratios" so that the Table in his paper could finally show the “correct” preconceived age, established in this field of research.[75][76] This methodological flaw is known as data torturing.

Using circular logic — assuming that decay rates remained constant despite necessarily changing physical characteristics as time approached the origin — Old Earth proponents insist that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old based on an assumption of constancy in Potassium-argon (K:Ar) decay rates and other radiometric methods.[77]

Turning science upside down

Doctrine outside the realm of science

"If a theory or point of view is treated only as a doctrine to be validated, and not one to be challenged, it is not within the realm of science."

After their acceptance of evolutionary dogma on “antiquity as a partially known factor” by faith, followers of evolutionary scientism started to assure that “the earth’s age must be very much greater than Kelvin calculated”. Consequently, they commanded science to be turned upside down: ”Kelvin’s problem must now be reversed” – instead of research finding the age of the earth, it should be already taken as given by their doctrine instead, and the only role left to science is to confirm it and determine the thermal history of the earth that would be in accord with it.[45]

In 1978, Geotimes magazine published by American Geological Institute quoted John Eddy, a famous astronomer, who argued that due to “some new and unexpected results“ scientists could live with bishop Ussher’s 4004 B.C. value for the age of Earth and Sun, a fortiori since there is not much in the way of observationalevidence in astronomy to conflict with his calculations.[79][80] American astronomer Robert Jastrow maintains that for "the scientist who has lived by his faith in 'the power of reason', the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak" and "as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."[81]

Notes

↑Ad. “time itself performs miracles” - cf. Evolution of the gaps: An 'explanation' that has no other than philosophical implication and that cannot be tested is regarded for a key symptom of ideological thinking. Moreover, the Slovak poet Ondrej Fabrici maintained that idols of the old pagan belief systems have been refurbished and disguised in the changed setting of the modern era under the new name of scientific endeavor.[28] For example, the “incomprehensibly vast periods of time” invoked by evolutionism is in fact nothing more than refurbished and masqueraded belief in creative power of elapsing time represented either by ancient Babylonian god, transposed into Greek mythology as Chronos, or antique Aeon,[29] a divine power constituting a gnostic belief system.[30]

«I asked Ramsay how long a time he allowed for that history. He answered that he could suggest no limit to it. I said “You don’t suppose geological history has run through 1,000,000,000 years?” “Certainly I do.” “10,000,000,000 years?” “Yes.” “The sun is a finite body. You can tell how many tons it is. Do you think it has been shining for a million million years? ” “I am as incapable of estimating and understanding the reasons which you physicists have for limiting geological time as you are incapable of understanding the geological reasons for our unlimited estimates.” I answered, “You can understand the physicists’ reasoning perfectly if you give your mind to it.”» Lord Kelvin, conversation on geological time with Sir Andrew Ramsay during the meeting of the British Association at Dundee in 1867[42]

“I require for my theoretical views a very long period before the Cambrian formation.” Ch. Darwin[44]

Vallisneri, who together with Leibniz urged Louis Burguet to consider biblical time as too restricted, could add nothing more to his early conviction that the earth is "of nearly incomprehensible antiquity". Rappaport (p.195-7)[18]

↑For partisans of Clifford's injunction closing this volume at once definitely appears to be a highly commendable suggestion.

"God is mathematician of a very high order and He used advanced mathematics in constructing the universe."Paul Dirac[49]

"Religion and natural science are fighting a joint battle in an incessant, never relaxing crusade against skepticism and against dogmatism, against unbelief and superstition … [and therefore] ‘On to God’"Max Planck[49]

↑cf. "[Rutherford and Soddy] could not get away from the fact, however, that radium itself, although universally regarded as an element, decays far too rapidly to be as old as the minerals in which it is found. The only solution seemed to be that radium too must be a metabolon with a 'life' of a few thousand years."[65]

↑The claim on the contamination explaining the "discordant result" is in direct contradiction with previous statements that neither analytical nor extremely unlikely terrestrial contamination could explain the results. According to Ryan Dobson, author of a book on moral relativism, a person that holds conflicting opinions about something and starts disagreeing with himself of herself is in trouble.[73] The trouble maintaining a train of thought in logical and coherent manner is regarded by medical science as symptom and characteristic of schizophrenia.[74]

↑Proglas(Slovak). sme.sk. “The parchment version of Proglas in Cyrillic from 13th century was discovered in 1858 by Russian Slavic scholar Hilferding”

↑Proglas, the foreword to the Old Church Slavonic translation of the four Gospels. The Centre for Information on Literature, Slovakia. “Explanations: in our seventh millennium – it means the seventh millennium since the Creation. It was calculated as follows: 5 508 years that had passed since the Creation till Jesus Christ’s birth plus 863 AD (the year when Constantine and Methodius had come to Moravia) added to the year 6 371 -- that is seventh millennium.”

↑ 13.013.1Encyclopaedia Britannica: supporting a young earth!. creation.com. Retrieved on November 8, 2014. “The concept of billions of years for the age of the earth was unknown to science (or to the church[4]) before the rise of uniformitarianism in the 19th century. This is strong evidence that modern long-age views of creation do not originate in Genesis, but are a misguided attempt by some Christian leaders to try to reconcile what God has said with the atheistic pronouncements of evolutionary ‘science’.”

↑Johannes Kepler (1997). The Harmony of the World. American Philosophical Society, IX, XXXVII, 391, 410. “O, Almighty God, I am thinking Thy thoughts after Thee! ... The book is written, to be read either now or by posterity, I care not which. It may be well to wait a century for a reader, as God has waited six thousand years for an observer.”

↑Isaac Newton. "PART I. Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel.CHAP. I. Introduction concerning the Compilers of the Books of the Old Testament.", Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John. Originally: J. DARBY and T. BROWNE (2005:Project Gutenberg). Retrieved on 26 July 2015. “The Pentateuch is composed of the Law and the history of God’s people together; and the history hath been collected from several books, such as were the history of the Creation composed by Moses, Genesis 2:4; the book of the generations of Adam, #Ge 5:1;”

↑William W. Hay (2012). Experimenting on a Small Planet: A Scholarly Entertainment. Springer Science & Business Media, 63. ISBN 9783642285608. “Ussher’s was not the first nor last attempt to determine the age of the Earth from the Bible. Estimates had been made by the Venerable Bede in 723 (3952 BC) and John Lightfoot in 1644 (3929), and later by Johannes Kepler (3992 BC), and Isaac Newton (4000 BC) among others.”

↑Encyclopaedia Britannica: supporting a young earth!. creation.com. Retrieved on November 8, 2014. “The notion that the world in billions of years old has only been popular for about 200 years. Before that time most scientists understood that Noah's Flood was responsible for laying down the rocks which today are associated with millions of years. Richard Fangrad and Calvin Smith discuss the details.”

↑Batten 2002 quotes from "Young’s Analytical Concordance of the Holy Bible", 1879 8th Edition, 1939, which relates this, and reproduces the selection of the dates from Young.

↑David G. Dunbar et al. (1986 (Zondervan), 2005). "Nine: The Biblical Canon", in D.A. Carson and J.D. Woodbridge: Hermeneutics, Authority, and Canon. Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 256. ISBN 1-59752-118-3. “Professor John Redwood describes the commitments of seventeenth century Christians: “To the seventeenth-century biblical chronology, the account of Moses, and the science of geology were all part of the same world of learning. No one seeking to enquire into rocks or minerals, into earth history of formation of the earth’s configuration could afford to ignore or deny the value of his primary source, the Bible.” James Ussher in the early seventeenth century had based his dating of creation at 4004 B.C. on a detailed and literal reading of the historical accounts.”

↑Nikola Tesla (1982). My inventions: The autobiography of Nikola Tesla. NuVision Publications LLC, 41. “Up to that time I never realized that I possed any particular gift of discovery, but the Lord Rayleigh, whom I considered an ideal man of science, had said so, and if that was the case, I felt that I should concentrate on some big idea. At this time, as many other times in the past, my tought turned towards my mother's teaching. The gift of mental power comes from God, Divine Being, and if we concentrate our minds on that truth, we become in tune with this great power. My Mother had taught me to seek all truth in the Bible; therefore I devoted the next few months to the study of this work.”

↑Oskar Skarsaune (2002). "12:Orthodoxy and Heresy", In the Shadow of the Temple: Jewish Influence on Early Christianity. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 246. ISBN 978-0-8308-2844-9. “There are several gnostic “systems,” with a great deal of variety in details, but one can newertheless discern a basic pattern that is common to most or all Gnostic texts: There exists a highest God, who within himself comprises several divine powers. The Gnostics called these powers aeons, and there were different systems of arranging aeons. … This aeon, confused and in despair, created the material world…”

↑Philip C. England, Peter Molnar, Frank M. Richter. Kelvin, Perry and the Age of the Earth. Retrieved on 13 June 2015. “Before dissecting Kelvin's arguments, it is worth describing the worldview that he was opposing.”

↑ 37.037.1D. R. Wallace (June 14, 1987). IT'S AN OLD, OLD , OLD, OLD WORLD. NYT. Retrieved on 7 June 2015. “Hutton's theory of the earth as a geological clockwork of eroding continents balanced against uplifting ocean basins was not based on field observations but on his wishful, speculative confusion of geological process with Newtonian physics....Hutton and Lyell were dedicated not to modern notions of geological dynamism but to antique ones of geological steady-state...The textbook legend of Hutton and Lyell seems dim and confused compared with that of Copernicus and Galileo. In demonstrating the shallowness of that legend”

↑Charles Lyell (1881 (1990)). Principles of Geology. University of Chicago Press (reprint), 268 (XVII). “Most other geologists, whether or not they agreed with Lyell on specific issues, would in fact have considered themselves his allies in hoping “to free the science from Moses” (Lyell 1881, vol.1, p.268).”

↑ 44.044.1Charles Darwin (31 Jan 1869). Darwin, C. R. to Croll, James, Letter 6585. Darwin Correspondence Database. Retrieved on 21 July 2015. “The physicist William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) had calculated the age of the earth based on its cooling from a molten ball. He concluded that the earth could not possibly have existed with its crust in a similar state as at present for the length of time proposed by geologists (see W. Thomson 1865). In Origin 5th ed., p. 379, [Charles Darwin] noted that based on Thomson's calculation of the age of the earth and Croll's estimation that 60 million years had passed since the Cambrian period, the time left for the pre-Cambrian period (140 million years) was `hardly sufficient for the development of the varied forms of life which certainly existed towards the close of the Cambrian period'.”

↑ 45.045.145.2Arthur Holmes (1913). The age of the earth 2, 11, 135. Harper. Retrieved on July 18, 2015. “As an example of one of the more extravagant demands, mention may be made of Darwin’s estimate in 1859 of the time elapsed since the latter part of the Cretaceous period. From the rate of chalk erosion in Kent, he deduced that the excavation of the Wealden valleys had required a period of 300 million years. Referring to this estimate, Jukes gave his opinion that while it might be a hundred time too great, it was equally probable that it was hundred times too small. Evidently 30,000 million years, in the absence of more reliable data, was not considered an absurdly excessive period for the erosion of the Weald. It should be noticed, however, that after the publication of Thomson’s views, Darwin withdrew this estimate from the origin of species.”

↑FitzRoy's Bicentenary. The Friends of Charles Darwin. Retrieved on May 17, 2015. “The ridicule over the weather forecasts was probably the last straw that drove FitzRoy to suicide on 30th April, 1865. But there were numerous other factors that might have contributed to his tragic decision: his failed New Zealand governorship; a feeling of guilt at having helped Darwin arrive at his heretical theories; his belief that suicide was a family trait; who knows what else might have helped push him over the edge?”

↑Charles Darwin (14 Apr 1869). Darwin, C. R. to Wallace, A. R., Letter 6706. Darwin Correspondence Database. Retrieved on 21 July 2015. “Thompson's views of the recent age of the world have been for some time one of my sorest troubles, & so I have been glad to read what you say.f4:William Thomson held that the crust of the earth had solidified only 100 million years ago, and had criticised [Charles Darwin]'s estimate in the first edition of Origin of 300 million years for the denudation of the Weald (see W. Thomson 1862a, pp. 391--2). See also Correspondence vol. 16, letter to G. H. Darwin, [9 December 1868].”

↑Charles Darwin (24 July 1869). Darwin, C. R. to Hooker, J. D., Letter 6841. Darwin Correspondence Database. Retrieved on 21 July 2015. “In [Tait] 1869, p. 429, Tait had quoted [Charles Darwin]'s conjecture, based on his estimate of time needed for the denudation of the Weald, that far longer than 300 million years must have elapsed since the latter part of the secondary period (Origin, p. 287). In response to criticisms in the Saturday Review, 24 December 1859, however, [Charles Darwin] halved his estimate in the second edition of Origin, and removed the discussion altogether from the third edition.”

↑Charles Darwin (12 July 1871). Darwin, C. R. to Wallace, A. R., Letter 7858. Darwin Correspondence Database. Retrieved on 21 July 2015. “I can say nothing more about missing links than what I have said. I should rely much on pre-Silurian times; but then comes Sir W. Thompson like an odious spectre. Footnote: [Charles Darwin] discussed the absence of transitional forms in the fossil record in Origin 5th ed., pp. 208–15, 346–8. He thought William Thomson’s estimate of the time elapsed since the consolidation of the earth’s crust was probably too short for species to evolve according to his theory (Origin 5thed., p. 379)”

↑W. Thomson (Lord Kelvin) (1889). "On the Miracle of Life" [Actual title unknown. Excerpt from an address at the annual meeting of the Christian Evidence Society]. as quoted in Heros of the Telegraph by J. Munro.. Retrieved on July 18, 2015. “I may refer to that old, but never uninteresting subject of the miracles of geology. Physical science does something for us here. St. Peter speaks of scoffers who said that ‘all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation;’ but the apostle affirms himself that ‘all these things shall be dissolved.’ It seems to me that even physical science absolutely demonstrates the scientific truth of these words. We feel that there is no possibility of things going on for ever as they have done for the last six thousand years. ... The science of dead matter, which has been the principal subject of my thoughts during my life, is, I may say, strenuous on this point, that the age of the earth is definite. We do not say whether it is twenty million years or more, or less, but we say it is not indefinite. And we can say very definitely that it is not an inconceivably great number of millions of years.”

↑Ralph W. Matthews (December 1982). Radiometric dating and the age of the Earth. 5. Creation. pp. 41–44. "In spite of cautions and skepticism advised by the authors this number has been widely and enthusiastically accepted and is usually quoted as if the evidence was decisive and conclusive. It has assumed something of the status of a universal constant to which all other data must be fitted, thus it has become common practice to assume that data which does not fit this result is either wrong or unintelligible.".

↑Schizophrenia: Symptoms, Types, Causes, and Early Warning Signs. helpguide.org. Retrieved on 13 June 2015. “Fragmented thinking is characteristic of schizophrenia. Externally, it can be observed in the way a person speaks. People with schizophrenia tend to have trouble concentrating and maintaining a train of thought. They may respond to queries with an unrelated answer, start sentences with one topic and end somewhere completely different, speak incoherently, or say illogical things.”

↑Gale, N.H., Arden, J.W. and Hutchison, R. (20 November 1972). "Uranium-Lead Chronology of Chrondritic Meteorites". Nature (240): 56–57. doi:10.1038/physci240056a0. http://www.nature.com/nature-physci/journal/v240/n99/pdf/physci240056a0.pdf. "Considerable variations in uranium and lead concentrations are observed in different gram sized fragments of the same meteorite5·7,8, and fission track studies10 show that on the microscopic scale changes in uranium concentration by factors of 105 are observed over distances of ˜10˜2 cm. Because of experimental difficulties the uranium and lead concentrations and the lead isotopic abundances have not been measured hitherto in the same sample of a given meteorite, so that it is possible, but not proven, that the apparent lack of concordance between daughter and parent isotopes may be a direct consequence of these heterogeneities; this point of view has been well argued by Fisher11. Most of the early work on the determination of lead in meteorites was in any case badly hampered by analytical contamination by terrestrial lead.".

↑John Eddy quoted by R.G. Kazmann (1978). It’s About Time: 4.5 Billion Years (report on Symposium at Louisiana State University). Geotimes magazine (from 09/2008 renamed to Earth magazine) of American Geological Institute. pp. 18–20. "I suspect that the Sun is 4.5 billion years old. However, given some new and unexpected results to the contrary, and some time for some frantic recalculation and theoretical readjustment, I suspect that we could live with bishop Ussher’s value for the age of Earth and Sun. I don’t think we have much in the way of observational evidence in astronomy to conflict with that.".

↑Jon Covey (January 3, 2013). Age of the Universe. Creation In The Crossfire. Retrieved on December 30, 2014. “Evolutionary astronomers confidently argue the universe is 12-20 billion years old, although there is no certainty about any astronomical observations. John Eddy, a famous astronomer, once said that there isn’t much in the way of observational astronomy that proves the universe is old. He said that with “frantic theoretical readjustment” if new evidence showed that astronomers have been wrong, they could live with Bishop Ussher’s date of 4,004 B.C.”